It seems pretty undeniable to me that at this point, the biggest winner of tonight’s GOP primary in South Carolina was Barack Obama.
Mitt Romney seemed very vulnerable this week on issues that will matter to voters in the general election—issues that Mitt would have to win on to convince the electorate to throw Obama out, specifically, the economy. Any notion that Obama can be attacked on defense issues simply ignores one thing: Osama bin Laden. (Also, for the 5-10% who are unapproving of Obama at the moment from the left, he gets to say we’re out of iraq.)
It still seems to me that Romney will be the nominee, but after a bloody battle that only mires him deeper in accusations of being a bigwig insiderish “vulture capitalist” (thank you, Governor Perry) because in the end, it will probably be money and the GOP establishment that help him pull this off. And those resentments can be used by Democrats to either flip voters or keep them home. And it will cost him money to do so.
Of course, if Gingrich is the nominee, we can start talking about “50 state strategies.”